Forgetfulness

by Ward Just

  Shut up, Bernhard.

  Bernhard smiled thinly and fell silent.

  Yussef said, In the name of God. Please stop.

  Ah! the Frenchman said. The sphinx speaks!

  Please stop, Yussef said again.

  But I have no interest in what the sphinx says, the Frenchman said. I have no interest in the sphinx's thoughts except the thoughts that might relate to the events of—he looked closely at the dossier—November the fifteenth. The events on the mountain near the village of St. Michel du Valcabrère. And the days immediately before and the days immediately after. I have no interest in other things this afternoon. Later on we will explore the other things. For now I am interested in the fate of Florette DuFour.

  Thomas looked again at Yussef, his doughy skin and his thick lips, his heavy nose and delicate hands. The fingernails were clean. He would not have been out of place in any souk in the world. His eyes were unnaturally bright now, and still Thomas could not connect him to Florette and the fifteenth of November or anything else. He was a man in a chair, his hands shackled.

  With a turn of his head Yussef indicated the boy. He said, His name is—and the name, spoken in Arabic, eluded Thomas.

  Yes, the Frenchman said. I'm sure it is.

  He is from Rabat, as I am.

  I see, the Frenchman said, looking again at the file in his hands.

  He is nineteen years old.

  An adult, the Frenchman murmured, not looking up.

  He is my son, Yussef said.

  I'll be damned, Bernhard said. How do you like that?

  I ask you not to harm him.

  We have no interest in your requests. You are not here to request. You are here to answer. The Frenchman turned a page of the file, neglecting to wet his thumb, and then he made a sudden motion with his right hand and the cigarette fell to the floor. It had burned his fingers.

  Sir, Yussef began, but stopped when the guard slapped his shoulder. But Thomas thought he saw a ghost of a smile.

  Silence! Be quiet! You are not to speak! The Frenchman resumed his circuit of the room, walking with the slow tread of a priest, and in a moment he had disappeared down the stairs. The prisoners could not see him and for all they knew he was still present. The guards remained at attention behind each prisoner and the room was quiet except for the on-again, off-again whimpering of the boy. He stole a quick glance at his father but Yussef did not acknowledge it, instead raising his eyes to the ceiling and seeming to settle into a meditative state, staring into the heavens or the interior of the Great Mosque, some refuge from the world. Thomas watched him for a minute or more, trying without success to divine his thoughts and to place him in the everyday world. It was easy to see him now in a suit and tie, perhaps the owner of a jewelry store or a salesman of fine carpets, the owner of a small hotel or an arms merchant, the latest gadgetry from Czechoslovakia or the broken-down warehouses of the former Soviet Union. But his face gave nothing away and his thoughts were unreadable. Odd that he should have been trekking Big Papa. Yussef didn't look as though he could walk fifty feet without pausing for rest. Thomas watched him a while longer but learned nothing. The boy was silent also, and the other two were invisible men.

  That will be it for now, Bernhard said. Antoine will want to think things over. I'd guess he'll be back in an hour or two. He turned to say something to one of the investigators, who looked at his watch and said, Yes, probably three o'clock. Not before. If it's earlier I can call you if you have a mobile. Bernhard gave him the number and the investigator wrote it down.

  Would Antoine like company for lunch?

  Antoine likes to dine alone, the investigator said.

  Very well then, Paul—

  Pierre, the investigator said.

  Yes, sorry. Thomas? Shall we have lunch? Oysters at the port?

  All right, Thomas said.

  What did you think of this? Pierre and Paul and the other one were listening but Bernhard ignored them.

  I didn't like it, Thomas said.

  Of course not, Bernhard said. You're not trained. You have no experience in these matters. The technique is confusing at first, what's being done and why. The pauses and the silences, the pacing, the entrances and exits. The protocol. Did you know that Chaplin said the essence of performance was the entrance and the exit? That's what he said. And he ought to know. It's a specialized skill and you should consider yourself lucky that you haven't had to learn it. So we've had a successful beginning. Antoine should receive a medal. You've just watched one of the best, Thomas.

  Thomas supposed that was true, performance art in the afternoon, an ensemble, each actor with a role, and Antoine the star. Every society needed people to do their dirty work, taking care to keep the worst of it out of sight, unacknowledged, and deniable. Certainly there was a talent to it, interrogation and torture. Patience, of course, and something else. Thomas smiled to himself. Lebenslüge would be involved. Lebenslüge, he thought, was probably in first position.

  Bernhard leaned close to him and whispered, Antoine's worked with the Comédie Française. A valued colleague, I'm told. Gifted at farce. He enjoys playing Le Misanthrope. Thrives on it. Can you believe it?

  Is that the one where they use bastinados?

  Sarcasm does not become you, Thomas. The bastinados cause no permanent damage.

  They don't? It looked like they did.

  They hurt like hell and there's some blood. Bruising, some scarring, but nothing truly serious. Bernhard turned suddenly to Pierre and inquired, Where do you get them from?

  Corsica, I believe. It's the noise that unsettles. The slap.

  But there's no permanent damage, Bernhard said.

  No, that is correct, Pierre said. Of course you have to know how to use them properly. In the hands of an oaf anything is dangerous.

  Bernhard said, They are most often used on the soles of the feet—

  But we don't do that here, Pierre said.

  It is outside the protocol, Bernhard said.

  Those are our instructions, Pierre said.

  You can ruin a man's feet. He'll never walk again.

  So it's said, Pierre agreed.

  Bernhard threw his arm around Pierre's shoulders and moved off a little ways, a private discussion concerning the best restaurant in the port for oysters. When Bernhard mentioned one restaurant, Pierre shook his head and said it had a bad reputation. The freshness of the oysters was in question. There was another place, down the street, called Café Marine. Everyone goes there. Try the belons. While they discussed the merits of belons and papillons, Thomas looked again into the prisoners' room. Yussef continued his meditation, eyes closed. The boy stared glumly at the cigarette that remained at his place. The other two appeared to be dozing, unlikely as that seemed; in any event, their shoulders were slumped and their breathing was regular, their faces slack. In one corner a guard yawned and looked at his watch. Thomas tried to think of it as a picture but the composition was all wrong. A fly had entered the room and was careering here and there around the boy's head. When it lit, it lit in a path of blood and could not free itself. The boy never noticed.

  We have our marching orders, Bernhard said, rubbing his hands together. The Café Marine it is.

  Let's go now, Thomas said.

  Monsieur Railles? Pierre approached him, hand out.

  I'm very sorry, Monsieur Railles.

  Thomas shook hands, having no idea what Pierre was talking about. He said, Yes—

  Your wife, Monsieur Railles. I am sorry for what they did to her.

  Thank you, Thomas said.

  They are animals.

  Yes, Thomas said.

  Scum. And your wife was French?

  Yes, she was.

  We will find the truth.

  I hope so, Thomas said.

  We are very close now. Just this far. Pierre held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. The old one, we break his balls. The old one and his so-called son.

  Thomas said, The boy is not his son
?

  Of course not, Bernhard said.

  I'm not asking you. I'm asking Pierre.

  No, Pierre said. Of that we are quite certain.

  Bernhard smirked. See? Quite certain.

  Outside, the wind was raw and carried with it the acrid smell of the sea. Thomas shivered and set his shoulders against the wind. The air was filled with soot and woodsmoke from the shops and apartment buildings and boarding houses of the district. The neighborhood had the blank, horizontal look of a Hopper cityscape. They walked for a while, the only people on the street until they arrived at the Rue Georges Braque at Square St. Roch, where they encountered office workers and women pulling shopping baskets. And then Bernhard knew they had taken a wrong turn. They walked along the Rue Georges Braque until they arrived at the Place de l' Hôtel de Ville, a great vacant public space, the buildings dating only from the end of World War II. British bombing had destroyed most of the city in 1943. Le Havre had a strangely provisional look to it, a first rough draft of municipal life. Thomas paused to consider what the quarter might have looked like before the war but Bernhard was eager to find the restaurant and irritated that precious minutes had been lost.

  Who cares? Thomas said.

  You should care. I want to get back to our French friends in good time. I don't want to miss the payoff, Bernhard said, striding off.

  Go on ahead, I'll meet you there, Thomas said.

  The day had left Thomas dispirited. He had risen very early. Too many hours on the trains, too many minutes in the loft room watching men being beaten. Antoine's slow-motion pantomime, and nothing to show for it except a low-grade depression in an unlovely port city. Thomas walked slowly in the direction of the harbor. The breeze stiffened and he no longer smelled woodsmoke but the inviting aroma of fish sautéed in butter. The cafés and restaurants were beginning to empty but in most of them a few old parties remained at the zinc bar, nursing calvados or marc, fortifying themselves for the rigors of the afternoon. Thomas stopped at one café and sat at an outdoor table next to an electric heater and ordered a double espresso and a glass of beer. The waiter returned almost at once with the order, slipped the tab under the saucer, and went back inside. At the bar, three of the old parties were laughing about something, an escapade from the sound of it; also, they were flirting with the waitress, a very pretty sweatergirl, a redhead. They called her Grand-mère. Their laughter and flirting made Thomas smile and his mood began to improve. He sat drinking beer and watching traffic in the Rue Victor Hugo, wondering if Hugo as a young man had anticipated that after his death half—no, ninety percent—of the cities and villages in France would have a Rue Victor Hugo. Boulevard Victor Hugo. Avenue Victor Hugo. Of course he would, the great writer was not shy. Victor Hugo always expected great things of himself. Of France itself he was a little less certain. Thomas remembered that his father had had a street named for him in LaBarre. Railles Crescent, a curvy street in a subdivision west of town, the subdivision called, alarmingly, Sunset Acres.

  Thomas paid the bill and resumed his stroll toward the harbor. He was in no hurry to get there and, once there, would be in no hurry to leave. He realized that he was ravenously hungry. The precipice drew near: he was on a perfect knife's edge of indecision, believing one moment that he never should have left St. Michel du Valcabrère, believing the next that his witness was important. Everything that can be known must be known, or that was the theory. But he was unable to identify the line between witness and voyeur. What he had now was an unfinished portrait, far from a work of art. He had tried to see under their skin but could not; the prisoners were as concealed as if they had sacks over their heads and Florette kept getting in the way. He hated what they had done to the boy but found it impossible not to watch, as if he were a spectator in the amphitheater of an anatomy lesson, the corpse naked on the table. To turn away would have been false but he believed he should have done so. Not for them, not for Florette, but for himself. He had not solved the problem of who was owed what or if anyone was owed anything. Yet here he was in Le Havre.

  The streets were crowded now.

  In the distance he saw Café Marine, Bernhard waiting impatiently at the door. Thomas slowed down, remembering the look of the redheaded sweatergirl. He thought that pedestrians in this port city walked with a different gait than the inhabitants of St. Michel du Valcabrère, a rolling light-footed walk in keeping with the motion of the sea. Everyone in St. Michel walked with a slight stoop, feet flat on the ground. They moved slowly, in part because of the hills; at times you felt you were climbing the Matterhorn simply walking from the church to the café. The redheaded girl had a rolling gait and a skirt as tight as any ship's hull. Thomas decided he needed a vacation, somewhere warm, somewhere remote, Sardinia or Madeira. Perhaps Ireland, where redheaded girls were native. He would rent a place by the sea and paint from dawn to sundown.

  Where have you been?

  I stopped for an espresso and a beer, Thomas said.

  Took your time about it, Bernhard said.

  I was tired. The morning wore me out.

  You're not as tired as they are. And you're not hurting.

  I saw a redheaded girl. Beautiful girl flirting with some fishermen who were even older than I am. They flirted back so a great time was had by all. I wish to hell I'd had my sketchpad.

  They paused at the entrance to Café Marine to look at the écailler's bin, four kinds of oysters and a flock of langoustines on a bed of shaved ice surrounded by a picket line of uncut lemons. On the margins were moules, étrilles, tourteaux, bigorneaux. Inside, they took the nearest table and ordered three dozen oysters and a bottle of Sancerre. The café was brightly lit and not crowded. Through the window they watched the écailler go to work. It took him under five seconds to shuck an oyster. The wine arrived in a heavy plastic bucket, sweat beading its exterior. By the time the wine was opened and poured the oysters arrived on a great pewter tray, arrayed according to type. For a while they ate and drank without speaking. Halfway through, Thomas ordered a second bottle, a demi. Bernhard added half a dozen oysters, three belons, three papillons. Thomas did not care for belons and told him so. Bernhard said the belons were for him, the papillons for Thomas. Finally the tray was empty except for crushed ice. Oyster shells were stacked on three white plates. They ordered coffee and when the waiter asked if they wanted a digestif, Thomas requested a calvados and Bernhard a cognac. The waiter smiled his approval, muttering something about their being serious men. In a zone of enviable well-being, they relaxed and drank coffee. When Thomas looked at his watch, he discovered they had been in Café Marine for exactly forty-five minutes, about one minute per oyster. He was hungrier than he realized.

  He said, Do you know what I remembered? There's a street named for my father in LaBarre.

  What reminded you of that?

  Rue Victor Hugo. Rue Georges Braque.

  My old man, Bernhard said. Bookies Hall of Fame.

  How long since you've been back?

  I was back last year, Bernhard said. Drove up from Chicago just for the hell of it.

  Twenty-five years for me, Thomas said. I haven't even been in the country for ten years.

  You wouldn't like it, Bernhard said.

  Why not?

  It's a spoiled, peevish country. Whines a lot. Mad at everybody. National politics is broken and no one knows how to fix it. Economy's broken, too, because America doesn't believe it has to pay for what it buys. Someone else can pay because America's owed a free ride because it's the beacon of democracy et cetera. But what the hell. Doesn't matter to me. I only work for the government. And I don't want to talk about it anymore.

  Thomas nodded, understood. Are we going to see Russ this afternoon?

  Problem there, I'm afraid. He's back in the States. His daughter's laid up again.

  Caitlin?

  No, the other one. Grace. Russ got a call yesterday morning and was on the afternoon flight to New York. He felt he had to be with her and he probably did. He promised
to call this afternoon with details.

  That poor girl, Thomas said.

  She's been through a lot. And she was such a great kid when she was young.

  That's true, she was.

  That's what everyone called her, a Great Kid. That Grace, isn't she something? From about age thirteen, most poised kid you ever saw. Polite without making a big deal of it. Filled with good cheer, smart as a whip, president of her class at whatever prep school she went to. And a knockout to look at. Then one morning she presents herself at the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital dressed in a bathrobe and nothing else. Wouldn't talk. Had no ID on her. The doctors suspected rape or some other trauma but an examination revealed nothing. No rape, no trauma. She had not been beaten. And still she wouldn't talk. It took three days for Russ and her mother to find her, and when they did, she didn't recognize them. She was away for a year and when she got out she didn't return to college. But at least she was speaking a few words. They never discovered the cause, and believe me, they tried. The best headshrinkers money could buy. But you know what I think? I think it was the burden of being a Great Kid. Maybe she didn't feel so great all the time but that was her identity. She'd walk into a room and everyone would light up. What's Grace been up to lately? Did she have a boyfriend? She's such a Great Kid she deserves the best. That look, that smile. I think it became an intolerable burden for her, a burden as heavy as the world itself. And so she bent under its weight, as she had every right to do.

  I knew some of that, Thomas said. Not all.

  She broke Russ's heart.

  And her own, I would imagine.

  That, too, Bernhard said. And her mother's. Broken hearts all around.

  That's a sad, sad story.

  It's what they used to call you, you know.

  What did they used to call me?

  A Great Kid. Tommy Railles, the doctor's boy. Just a great kid. Smart at school, a decent athlete, great with the girls, wonderful with older people. And so talented. He'll make a name for himself, that Tommy.

  Bullshit, Thomas said.

  Bernhard laughed. True, every word. Meanwhile, I was that little prick Bernhard, the bookmaker's son. Come to no good end. Stay out of his way, don't let your boys grow up to be like Bernhard Sindelar. He's a strange one. No one could figure out what I was doing hanging out with you, a certified Great Kid.